A 10-year-old pupil at a primary school in Newbury Park has written a musical which is set for the stage in the new year.

Kayla-Ruth Ayertey, who attends William Torbitt Primary School, penned Walking Blind during the Covid pandemic and her creation will be brought to life next January at the Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre in Walthamstow.

Kayla’s father Jesse Ayertey, who is producing the show, told the Recorder how writing had helped his daughter cope with the pandemic, keeping her busy and helping her to find herself.

“Having read it, I just couldn’t believe that she had wrote that,” he said.

“I’ve had to take a step back and understand that it came from a place of loneliness. It came from a place of trying to find herself and her identity and all that.”

Jesse works as a service manager at a hospital, but having been involved in the theatre all his life and even performed at the Barbican, he was glad to find that his daughter shared his passion for the stage.

“I thought it was my thing,” he laughed.

“Because she is quite brilliant at school, she’s really good at science and maths, she wants to be an astronaut and so many other things science-related.

“So to finally see a bit of me in her was such a great feeling, because I always knew she had it.”

The musical tells the story of a teenager who comes to live in the UK from an African nation and faces a crisis over her values and identity.

Jesse explained that while he is African, Kayla’s mother is West Indian, and spending time in both homes makes identity an apt subject for exploration.

He said: “She didn’t understand what she had written, but I could see elements of it as I was reading them and I started asking her questions about identity.

“I wrote a couple of things down on paper about what identity means to me and I asked her to do the same.

“She’s trying to identify herself in these two worlds and I feel like she has represented her struggles in the script, which is why I am so keen to produce it.”

The musical is produced by JA Media House and will run from January 7-9 2022.